The twin disruptors of Brexit and Covid-19 have fundamentally changed the labour market both in terms of what employees expect from their working lives and access to the global talent pool. To find out how organisations have reshaped their talent management strategies in response, Hult International Business School conducted research that examines how employers are continuing to attract and retain employees with the skills needed to drive growth.
The findings have uncovered seven key talent management areas that organisations and their HR function should be focusing on following this profound and permanent shift.
1. Reprioritisation of strategic talent management
The sudden supply side shocks caused by Brexit and Covid-19 has resulted in the exponential rise of talent management in strategic priorities. Discussions on issues of skills and talent are taking place more frequently and at higher levels up the organisation chain than existed pre-Brexit and pre-pandemic.
Talent management was always there in the background, but it has moved from the periphery right into the heart of our organisation[al] narratives. In fact, we are a little bit obsessed by it, and we talk about it the whole time: where to get it and how to keep it!
(Anonymous research participant)
HR itself reflects this reprioritisation with greater use of talent and culture in job and departmental titles – symbolically emphasising the accelerated importance of talent up the escalator of priorities.
2. Reassessment of leadership styles
How leaders treated their employees during the pandemic did not go unnoticed. Horror stories of leaders that opportunistically used the pandemic to shed staff and/or rachet up workloads, still linger in the collective memory. But equally there are the stories of leaders who went out of their way to protect and shield their employees as best they could. Post-crises organisations in our study are leaning into notions of empathic and engaging leadership. The collective trauma of Covid-19 has given permission to managers and leaders to speak of ‘kind leadership’.
As a senior leader I couldn’t have spoken about kind leadership before the pandemic, without getting laughed at; nobody laughs now!
(Anonymous research participant)
For some, kindness has the potential to be a “leadership superpower” that can help create more trusting, open and psychologically safe workplace cultures, which in turn can contribute to improved performance and productivity, as highlighted in a recent FT article.
3. Reflecting on our employment offer
What do we offer? Why would somebody want to work with us? These are questions exercising managers and leaders. The issue is important for talent management because it’s less about a shortage of applicants and more about a (in some cases dire) shortage of skills and how we can convert employment offers to acceptance.
We get lots of applicants, but out of 200 applicants per role you might only get a handful with the required skills, and we are in competition for them, so we have to have an attractive offer to bag them.
(Anonymous research participant)
Organisations find their offer needs to be clear and generous in four main areas:
- Rewards (financial and non-financial)
- Employee relations (more consensus cultures, less controlling cultures)
- Inclusivity and psychological safe cultures
- Flexibility (including hybrid working)
Employees have changed – those with choices and options appear more assertive in what they are willing to accept (and not accept). They more readily negotiate on terms, conditions, salaries and on other factors that will (not) impede their wellbeing.
4. Resisting a return to the old way
In nearly all our interviews, senior HR people report in-house tensions within leadership and management teams between those who unequivocally support the roll out of remote and hybrid working and those who remain cautious and are in some cases hostile to the idea.
However, they also report that hybrid working has changed the talent market from the outside-in. It’s what most employees want, and employers feel a need to embrace it and offer it, regardless of their personal views on the matter.
If a role can be done remotely or hybrid, then employees expect it, it’s not a nice add-on anymore, it’s a must. We just need to offer it, or we’ll lose them.
(Anonymous research participant)
However policies and practices are divergent, and evolving in often inconsistent and fragmented ways.
5. Rediscovering the internal and the local
The challenging external talent landscape forged by the twin disruptors of Brexit and Covid-19 has resulted in increased awareness and appreciation of talent in both the organisation and local community. Periods of external turmoil, upheaval and uncertainty provide an opportune time for organisations to reflect on their internal human capital (Gibson et al., 2021).
We found organisations in this study to have a heightened awareness that their internal talent provides strategic and competitive advantage, which require continued investment through continuous learning and skills development
6. Resilience
Battle metaphors were widely used in our conversations with leaders, where Covid-19 (in particular) was seen as a war that required resiliency at all levels. Organisations are curious to build on those lessons of resiliency, to help deal with future external crises.
They question how to bring resilience into the organisation, incorporate it into the talent management process and build it into staffing models. Resilience questions are increasingly asked at interview stages. We therefore see links between the experiences of Brexit and Covid-19 and growing corporate interest in resilience as an organisational capability.
The suggestion is that critical talent competencies, including tolerance for ambiguity, individual resilience, and curiosity (Caligiuri et al., 2020), are key features that need to be developed. However, our research found that leveraging this qualitative interest into quantifiable and embedded practices remains at early stages of development.
7. Rhetoric or reality?
How much of this change constitutes a radical new long-term reality? In institutional terms, most organisations are at the early stages of responding to the long-term fallout of the twin disruptors. For example, managerial aspirations towards more engaging, inclusive and authentically flexible cultures, with the aim at increasing attraction and retention, are laudable. However, rhetoric does not always equate to execution or successful outcomes.
There are questions about whether these claims to change are ephemeral, or actually constitute a radical reshaping of organisational approaches towards talent management in a new age. In this regard, further longitudinal work is called for, to chart the continuing journey of organisations as they respond to a changing external talent context.
This research on ‘Brexit and Covid-19 as catalysts for strategic change in talent management in UK-based multinationals’ was conducted by Dr. Aidan McKearney and Professor Rea Prouska, Hult International Business School, UK; Professor Elaine Farndale, Penn State University, USA; and Dr. Kabiru Oyetunde, Loughborough University, UK. The researchers analysed quantitative data from 73 multinational enterprises plus qualitative data from 14 in-depth interviews with senior HR leaders.
